Graham is a typical Australian citizen.

Well, he would if we, humans, had evolved to survive car accidents. Graham is a sculpture commissioned by the Accident Commission on Transport (TAC) which responds to the government of the State of Victoria, Australia. It’s part of a project aimed at traffic awareness.

Participated in the development of “Graham” the trauma surgeon at Royal Melbourne Hospital, Dr. Christian Kenfield, a specialist in traffic safety and vehicular safety; a researcher at the Monash University Accident Research Center, Dr. David Logan, and the Australian artist Patricia Piccinini, who works with sculptures.

The surgeon Christian Kenfield explained that the human body are not designed to withstand injuries caused by car accidents. Even collisions where the vehicle are slowly, like 25 or 30 km/h can result traumas. The accident expert, Dr. David Logan, told “cars have evolved much faster than we do” and the human body lacks the physiology to absorb the energies involved in a collision.

In a traffic accident, our body is in uniform rectilinear motion in conjunction with the vehicle until the car has the movement abruptly cut off.

According to Newton’s first law which describes that a moving body tends to remain in motion, our body continues to move forward, and that’s the main reason of  using a safety belt, so that we are not flung out of the vehicle. Even when our body stops, if the beat is very violent, our brain continues its forward movement, colliding with the skull wall. And when we hit the airbag or have our body secured by the belt, we are thrown back again, beating the brain against the back of the skull.

Kenfield says even the strongest man couldn’t stop his own body from being thrown forward, because the energy of the impact is too great.

Given all these characteristics, Graham was created. “The only one projected to survive on the roads.”

Graham

Graham’s brain is the same as ours, says the artist Piccinini, but his skull is much larger to accommodate more brain fluid and ligaments that give more support and hold the brain in place. The cranial cavity is larger and has been designed to better absorb shock energy and prevent it from spreading to the brain, almost like a helmet. Another detail is the neck: because the violent displacement that it suffers in beats is another common cause of death in accidents. That’s why Graham was designed without a neck.

The face is prone to impact damage with the steering wheel, dashboard, or glass cut, so Graham doesn’t have a nose and has a lot of fatty tissue to absorb the impact. Just as your skin is thicker, with more layers, in order to the lesions in the tissue are not as severe. This is especially important for motorcyclists, who are more likely to have skin lesions.

The human being evolved with a natural mechanism to protect the organs: the rib cage, but to survive the car accidents would require reinforced ribs and another mechanism suggested by

Kenfield that would be a kind of internal airbag: a structure that would release a fluid to help absorb the impact energy.

When a pedestrian is striking, one of the major fractures occurs in the knees. They are designed to bend in only one direction and, usually, people are struck on the side of the body, on the knee height, forcing them to turn aside. Thus, the human evolved to withstand accidents, would have knees that bend to the two directions and reinforced ligaments that allow this movement, like Graham.

And still thinking about the situation of the pedestrian, where the legs are the first to be hit and several variables can define the severity of the accident, the artist made Graham’s legs and feet that simply took him out of this risky situation. He has very strong legs and muscles that allow him jumping away.

The sculpture

Graham will be on display in Victoria for a while and then will go on a tour the country. The purpose is to realize that we are not capable of surviving accidents, unless we are like him, a very strange creature. This shows that we are vulnerable and, given this vulnerability, we must be attentive and respect life.

You can see Graham online at: http://www.meetgraham.com.au/view-graham